The Recovery Process

I spent the day feeling fat.

It is funny how even pre-eating disorder, when I was at my heaviest weight (still much heavier than I am now), I don't remember feeling fat this often. Back then, I was only self-conscious of my body around other people. I thought that they would judge me or think I was fat. Now, I continue to feel fat and unattractive even when I am the only person around. Thankfully, these feelings come and go. They are much less frequent than they were before I started the recovery process. I call it the "recovery process" as if it's something I have applied for and am now waiting to hear back from. I make it sound very business like and very clinical, but that's not my intention. For me, recovery has been the complete opposite. It has been full of life and emotion (though not always good emotion). I have avoided doctors because I don't trust them. I have avoided proper therapy and conventional eating disorder treatment (partly because I don't have health insurance and it's terribly expensive). So, I've had to go at this on my own for the most part, but I think it's working out okay. I've been asked before how recovery works. It's not easy to describe. It's as if my eating disorder controlled my every thought and every action for so many years, then, as time went on, it slowly began to fade away. I don't want to make it seem mystical or supernatural. I fought to get rid of it and I'm fighting still. But I feel sometimes like I couldn't be anorexic again even if I wanted to. I feel like it's no longer inside of me. Other times I know this isn't true, like today, when I sit around calling myself fat and thinking I need to stop eating and go on a diet.

The truth is, I'm not sure how recovery works. I don't know why some people recover and others don't, why some people relapse more often than others, why it takes more time for some people to recover than others. I am figuring it out as I go. I just know that the life I live now is much healthier and freeing than the life I had when I was sick. That wasn't living at all. That was dying. I feel like my thoughts are my own again. It's very liberating. I don't like being told what to do.

That's all I know.